The New “Pax Americana” Is Put to the Test

Will Barack Obama succeed where several of his predecessors have failed? Reviving his status as a famous diplomat, will he get the Palestinians and Israelis in this “complicated” Middle East to listen to reason? Mahmoud Abba, president of the Palestinian Authority, will meet with Benjamin Netanyahu at a new summit organized under this aegis in New York. Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, elected last February and stubbornly committed to his mythical dream of a mighty Israel, has simply decided—through provocation or a hard-line stance—to initiate the construction of new Jewish colonies in the West Bank. Let’s not deceive ourselves about the results or what the “modus operandi” of this umpteenth meeting will be; it will not be more “formal” or any more decisive than all that has preceded it.

The will of the American administration is needed to reunite the two protagonists because the entire world is watching and fixed on this 60-year-old matter. In addition, the American president, elected last November and installed in the White House, has promised to settle it. While it is very good that the United States remains the only superpower able to impose a bilateral negotiation, it’s also necessary to abandon the dream of new activity in the Israeli government.

George Mitchell, Barack Obama’s special emissary to Palestine and Israel, spent last week trying to argue in favor of an end to construction and occupation of Palestinian land. Obviously, he clashed against a flat-out refusal from the Netanyahu government, where the extreme political and religious right dominates Israel. We suspect, in effect, that the American emissary has simply failed in his mission, but the failure isn’t simply political: It is also psychological, given the stated radicalism of Benjamin Netanyahu, who is opposed to the optimism of the American president.

Didn’t Obama promise in his electoral campaign last year to take to take up the Middle East issue, even if it he hasn’t yet answered the Palestinian question? Even with his declared priorities of the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq and the inexhaustible negotiation with Iran (as it seems to equip itself with nuclear arms), Barack Obama couldn’t abandon the prickly case of Palestine that hung up his predecessor, George Bush.

Didn’t he organize—without success—a conference in Annapolis (near New York) in December 2008, to promote peace between the two parties? In fact, after moving into the While House last January 20, Barack Obama, in his wildest dreams, could only hope that the Israeli-Palestinian case was a sea serpent that wouldn’t surface.

An equitable settlement of the Palestinian question seems to depend on the outline of a global solution for the groups in the Middle East. Each part is integral in every diplomatic approach that one must use wisdom when drawing impressions.

In June 2008, when he was only a candidate in the presidential election and was invited to speak by the pro-Israeli lobbying group AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), Barack Obama became the herald of Israeli interests and notably of the “indivisibility of Jerusalem.” What the Palestinians have very nearly taken, like a knife in the back, as his explicit alignment with Israeli politics. He promised that he would continue to “guarantee the qualitative military advantage of Israel over the other states of the region” and that “Jerusalem will remain Israel’s capital and will not be broken up,” while some Israelis respect and even defend its pluralist and multi-confessional character. Was this a simple promise from a candidate in search of Jewish votes or flaunted political will?

The candidate who became president of the United States is put to the test: the politics of Benjamin Netanyahu and his foreign affairs minister, ultra-nationalist Avigdor Lieberman, aren’t only about irritation, but about barely bending to the point where the world community gets worried and heckles the United States and the European Union, who have been on a mission for a “roadmap” for some years, unable to soften Israel’s blind intransigence at all.

Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu have some opposing visions on the Palestinian question. If the traditional strategic axis between America and Israel isn’t and never will be put in question, the Palestinian problem could now constitute an abscess in a relationship once deemed “special.”

Never in the history of Israel—and inevitably in that of its relationship with the United States of America—has a refusal of state, of people and of simple humanism been pronounced with as much mistrust and arrogance in the consideration of the Palestinian people. In their glory, George Bush and Condoleezza Rice ended by accepting the principal of a Palestinian state and by the end of their term were convinced that peace in the Middle and Near East could only happen with the establishment of a Palestinian state. Not only is the current occupant of the White House not convinced, but shouldn’t he take the real measure of the stakes?

In any event, the Arab and Muslim world applauded his big speech in Cairo last June.